Households will be masked and stay six feet apart. Some pews will be blocked off to maintain this distance.

No more than 40% the usual maximum occupancy will be allowed in the church.

No collection basket will be passed.

The parishes will come up with some way for people to leave church in an orderly, spaced manner.

People will not gather after mass, whether to schmooze with the priest on the front steps, or to share coffee and donuts in the church basement.

Some tweaks:

There will be no hymnals or bulletins. “One time use” paper worship aids are allowed, so a parish could print out the readings and make them available in the pews. Alternately “the faithful may also be reminded of online sources for the daily readings… which may be accessed on their cell phone.”

You can receive Holy Communion. This involves briefly removing your mask, of course. An usher will give you a squirt of hand sanitizer as you exit your pew to stand in line. People should stay 6 feet apart while in line for Communion. The priest or Eucharistic minister will keep their mask on. They will not refuse to place the consecrated host on your tongue, rather than in your hands, but they do discourage this. If the minister accidentally touches someone while distributing the host, they will stop and sanitize their hands before continuing. (In my experience they are pretty good at sanitizing before beginning, but I’ve never seen someone take a break in the middle like that.) If I am reading this right, while on the altar, the hosts will be kept in a closed container” at some distance from the breath of the celebrant.” (This seems like a great change.)

Church doors will be propped open, so nobody will have to touch them.

There will be very little singing. (Please let’s not joke about how New England Catholics never sing anyway.) Singing seems like the only thing that would make attending mass riskier than working in an office for an hour. The music will be instrumental or sung only by the cantor (no choirs). The exception are a few parts of the mass like the “Agnus Dei.” I am counting fewer than 40 words total that would be sung by the congregation.

The priests and liturgical ministers will not process down the central aisle at the beginning or end of mass.

Altar servers will wear masks while handling bread, wine, and water. They will otherwise be unmasked.

Some current restrictions will remain in place:

The consecrated host, but not the consecrated wine, will be distributed at Holy Communion.

People will not touch each other while exchanging the sign of peace.

There will be no open fonts of holy water.

Churches will be disinfected thoroughly after each mass.

Priests, deacons, altar servers, and other liturgical ministers will be unmasked for most of the mass.

Compline Prayers for this Time of Seclusion

We’ve been praying this at home each night before some of us go to bed. (Others are night owls.)

This is formatted for people who’ve never prayed Compline before, and so that each day will fit on a double-sided sheet of standard letter-sized paper.

If you haven’t prayed this before, every night of the week is slightly different. You might want to light a candle, burn some incense, or otherwise set the mood before you begin. The leader reads everything in regular text. Another person reads everything in italics. The whole group reads everything in bold. Hymns are included, but you can choose another as you like. If you don’t know the “Salve Regina” another Marian hymn would be appropriate, like “Hail Holy Queen, Enthroned Above.”

If you’ve prayed this before, you’ll notice that some things are edited down a bit, so that everything will fit on a page while still being readable by those of average vision. You’ll also notice the “Salve Regina” uses a rogue form of musical notation. We use these sheets at our local soup kitchen, and the details have evolved over the years. Some weeks we are joined by people who can sight-read music, but not Gregorian notation. Whereas I don’t think there’s anyone who can sight-read Gregorian notation who doesn’t already know the “Salve Regina.”

Short film about Net of Compassion: “Bread of Life”

Richie, Elizabeth, and their whole “Net of Compassion” crew do some amazing work, most visibly offering services in a series of tents along Worcester’s Main Street each Saturday. They also collaborate on “Hotel Grace,” turning the basement of St. John’s Church into a 50-bed homeless shelter any night the temperature in Worcester is expected to drop below freezing. And they are looking to do more. If you are curious about helping the down-and-out in our city, getting involved with Net of Compassion is a great way to start.

Hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday at Epiphany of the Lord Catholic Church in Oklahoma City for the funeral Mass of Robert Max Augustine Waldrop, who served as the church’s director of music and liturgy, was a champion of the poor and started the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House.

Lenten Gameplan, 2019

posted by Mike on March 6th, 2019

Fasting: At last, Facebook has become a miserable enough experience that it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to give it up. So the likely candidates this year are the old classics: giving up (some) sugar, giving up caffeine, and so on. There are so many fastingfads these days, I might play around with a few, more out of curiosity than spiritual discipline.

Prayer: This year, for the first time in a long time, I’m already doing plenty of praying by myself and with my various communities. My plan is to maintain these, in Lenten form, but not add much extra work.

Reading List: Kugel’s How to Read the Bible (because why not provoke a crisis of faith during Lent?), Hart’s weird New Testament translation (at least the Gospel of John, more if it seems helpful), the Catechism (spread out at around 20 pages per Lenten day, stopping at the nearest chapter/article/section break), and Dorothy Day’s diaries (stopping each day when I’m as inspired or discouraged as I need to be). Lent is 6½ weeks, so that feels like plenty of reading to me. (Looking at the stack, I notice that a bonus Lenten sacrifice may end up being “carrying heavy books.”) In the unlikely event I need to fill more time with reading, I have ebooks of St. Thérèse, Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Spitzer’s How to Find True Happiness, and Pilgrim’s Progress at hand. This might be the perfect Lent to include some books or films on clergy sex abuse, but I am already reading tons on that, believe me.

Scent List: Zoologist’s perfume “Bat,” which Luca Turin observes is built around geosmin, the chemical odor of wet dirt and beets. Maybe the closest thing you’re going to get to ashes, but not incense-y, but not bad. Really only something I’m using on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

The purpose of Lent, therefore, is a microcosm of the life and worldview of the Christian believer. Knowing themselves to be the sons and daughters of the Resurrection, everything they think, feel, and do is placed in the light and hope of eternity. This gives the disciple of Jesus Christ the strength to forgive an enemy, control their sexual passions, suffer patiently, and selflessly serve others. When the Resurrection is lived and heaven is seen as a real possibility for the righteous, then everything is worth it and everything becomes ordered to it.

This week’s notes on the Catholic clergy abuse crisis

This week we are seeing a historic meeting on clergy sex abuse, including some Worcester participants; expanded rights for victims of abuse; financial difficulties in the Diocese of Worcester; and even some relevant anecdotes from my own life as a faithful Catholic.Read the rest of this entry »

In the carol, King Wenceslas did everything right to be called a saint. The “poor” was “gathering winter fuel” on St Stephen’s. Who would collect the fuel otherwise? When else? – What other time? What’s wrong with collecting fuel? Even if it were wrong, the king’s response was not – “Let’s reorganize the system for energy in the neighbourhood around my palace” but to call his page. All right – a feast might be had by all on St Stephen’s if the entourage made it to yonder the poor’s.

But on the festival of St John the Evangelist, on the Day of the Holy Innocents, the King remains king, the page page, the poor still poor. Only that the King now sleeps sounder on the 27th of December and will not look out. He may then commission the carol writer later in the afternoon for his hagiography. The unnamed “poor man” does not stop collecting winter fuel – even come January.